Comment by jacquesm

Someone suggested I get a Wise account a short while ago because it's cheaper than bank transfers. But I've never seen any kind of 'account freezing' from my bank that wasn't to protect me (for instance: by doing wire transfers from three different continents inside of 24 hours). But I've had trouble with just about any other PSP/money transmitter service in one form or another and I'm very wary of giving them access to my accounts and/or using them for significant transfers.

I don't actually care all that much about the transaction fees, but I really care about my payments reaching their destination and the fact that my reputation is tied into my ability to pay people agreed upon amounts in time for work performed. On their end they rely on me and these middlemen are welcome to their cut but in return they should do what they promise. Wise looks particularly bad here because they overran their self imposed deadline, which is too long any way. Payments in flight should be dealt with inside of 24 hours, you either forward the money to the destination or you refund to the originator so that they can pursue other ways to pay. Because otherwise you are going to cause massive problems, both for the originator and the recipient.

The only excuse would be a court order to seize the money. Other than that I can't see any reason why a money transmitter would seize payments unless it is inbound credit card payments where they are afraid of chargebacks. But that should be a contractually agreed upon hold-back, not something capricious.